‘But you managed to reassure him?’ said Tina.
He nodded. ‘Well, yeah, obviously. But he still wasn’t very happy about it. He started harping on about us having to get him a new identity with all the trimmings if it all went wrong. I told him we’d see what we could do, but we weren’t going to promise anything.’
I cleared my throat, thinking that I was very thirsty and could do with a cup of tea. Somehow, though, I didn’t think one would be forthcoming. I got the distinct impression Stegs didn’t like our presence in his house, though I suppose you could hardly blame him. No-one likes being questioned by the police, particularly the police. ‘But you said last night he didn’t know the actual location of the meet itself.’
‘He didn’t. He knew roughly when Fellano was going to be flying in. .’
‘And that was?’
‘I think he came in Tuesday night. Late.’
‘So who set up the actual location for the rendezvous?’
‘Fellano did. He spoke to me on Tuesday night. I phoned Vokes afterwards.’
‘And Fellano said that the meeting was going to be at the Donmar Hotel?’
Stegs shook his head. ‘No. He told me that the meeting was going to go ahead on the Wednesday, yesterday, but he didn’t say where, because they like to leave that sort of thing until the last minute. It’s safer that way. But SO11 had a tap on my phone and they used it to trace his call to the vicinity of the Donmar, so we concluded it was almost certainly going to be there. And at that point it became common knowledge among everyone on the op, which was what? Ten o’clock Tuesday night. That gave it eighteen hours to leak.’
‘Well, not really,’ I said. ‘You and Vokes knew because the information on the location of Fellano’s mobile was relayed to you by DCS Flanagan. He knew, obviously, as did the operator who actually pinpointed the call, and Malik, I believe, because he was with Flanagan at the time. But they were the only ones. We weren’t made aware of it’ — I pointed to myself and to Tina — ‘until we arrived at New Scotland Yard yesterday morning for the briefing. Neither was anyone else on the team. It was a very secretive operation, as you for one ought to appreciate.’
‘So you didn’t speak to O’Brien at all at any point after you found out the location of the meeting?’ asked Tina.
The big question.
‘No.’ There was the first sign of annoyance in his voice. Then his expression changed. ‘Hold on, tell a lie, I had a quick twenty-second conversation with him on the way into work yesterday morning. He rang me on my private mobile, the one I give to people who know my real identity. He was hassling me about what we were going to do to protect him when everything was over. I told him it was out of my hands, but that he’d definitely get protection. I hung up on him. That was it. As far as I know, Vokes didn’t speak to him either. There’d have been no point.’
‘Where were you when you made the call to Vokes on Tuesday night?’ I asked.
‘I was here, at home. In this very room, in fact, and I stayed at home for the rest of the night. You can ask the missus if you want. Or SO11. They’d have a record of the call and where it was made from. I’m not hiding anything, you know.’
I put up a hand to calm him. ‘Listen, Stegs, we’re not here to interrogate you or pick holes in any of your answers, we’re just trying to find out what, if anything, O’Brien knew which might have acted as a motive for someone killing him. You have to admit, the timing of his death is worryingly coincidental.’
Stegs sighed loudly. ‘Yeah, all right. Fair enough.’
He fidgeted in his seat, trying to get comfortable, and I noticed he was still sweating even though the room was cool.
‘Can you give us your movements for yesterday morning, Stegs?’ asked Tina, trying to sound as casual as possible. ‘Starting from when you left the house.’
‘Hold on, am I a suspect for something?’ he demanded, trying hard to keep his voice calm. ‘Are you making out I murdered him? Because if you are, or you think I might possibly have done it, then I want to stop this right now until I’ve got a federation rep here, or even a lawyer.’
‘No-one’s saying any of that,’ Tina reassured him. ‘But you know the score. We wouldn’t be doing our duty if we didn’t eliminate everyone involved from our enquiries. It’s just routine.’
He didn’t look convinced but gave her a detailed rundown of his movements anyway, including the times. There was nothing untoward or inconsistent in anything he said. While Tina wrote it all down, he stood up, opened the window as wide as it would go, and lit a Marlboro Light, blowing a lungful of smoke into the drizzling dusk.
‘Whose idea was it to leave the money behind in the car when you went into the meeting, Stegs?’ asked Tina when she’d finished.
He took a long drag on the cigarette before he answered, then fixed her with an expression only just this side of contemptuous. ‘Both of ours,’ he answered simply, daring her to disagree.
He continued smoking while we continued questioning him as carefully and as diplomatically as possible about aspects of his testimony the previous evening, trying our best not to rile him, but I think it was too late for that. He answered the questions without pause and didn’t appear to be lying, but of course you wouldn’t have been able to tell with a man like him anyway. His whole job was one long lie after another, so there weren’t going to be many people out there better at it than him.
After a further ten minutes, however, we ran out of things to ask, and thanked him for his co-operation and patience. ‘We’re sorry to intrude on you at a time like this,’ I told him. ‘We both know how difficult it is for you, having lost a mate and colleague, but I hope you understand we’ve got to ask.’
Tina said pretty much the same thing, and he nodded in acknowledgement, replying that he knew it wasn’t our fault but that he’d only done his job and now felt that he was being penalized for it.
‘That goes with the territory, Stegs,’ I said. ‘A policeman’s lot is rarely a happy one. Especially these days.’
He grunted something in reply and showed us down the highly dangerous staircase and to the front door. His wife called out a goodbye from the kitchen where she was feeding the baby, and admonished Stegs for not offering us a drink. ‘I would have done it but I’ve got this one here to deal with,’ she added as we stepped out into the rain and headed back to the car.
As we were driving back down the Finchley Road in the direction of my place, Tina asked me what I thought of Stegs Jenner’s overall demeanour.
‘He was looking stressed. I think he needs to talk to someone.’
‘Do you think they think he did it? Flanagan and Malik? I don’t mean pull the trigger, but that he was involved somewhere?’
‘In Robbie’s murder?’
‘In the whole thing. The robbery at the hotel, Robbie’s death. All of it.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The thing is, what would he gain by setting up the robbery? Not only did it leave his partner dead, but it could easily have left him dead too. And if he did set it up, what part did O’Brien play in the whole thing, and who then actually had him killed? And why? No, I think the problem is that Stegs rubs people up the wrong way. They don’t like him, and they don’t like the way he doesn’t follow the rules. So when something goes wrong it becomes very easy for them to think that at the very least his big mouth was responsible for the leak. My opinion is they think he might have spoken out of turn, and might have let slip something to O’Brien, but that’s the sum of it. What about you?’
She sighed. ‘There’s something about him, you know?’
‘That’s what I mean. People don’t like him. They think he’s a rule-breaker, someone you can’t trust.’
‘He is a rule-breaker. If he’d taken the money with him into the hotel room like he was meant to have done then he wouldn’t have split with Vokes, the robbery wouldn’t have occurred and six people wouldn’t have died.’